Blueways and Greenways, connecting communities: a small federal program that enables recreation byways throughout the country.

A mile here, a bridge there. A trailhead here, a canoe launch there. A plan for a 160-mile alternative transportation trail the length of the Florida Keys agreed upon by state, local and community partners. One hundred launch and landing sites in and around Seattle for canoes and kayaks. A unique public-private partnership agreement that enables construction of a trailhead that combines access to the Ohio and Erie Towpath Trail along with parking for a bike shop, ice cream parlor and restaurant. Yard by yard, mile by mile, America's trails are getting connected with help from a little known but extremely effective program of the National Park Service named the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA).

RTCA is a technical assistance program for local governments and non-profit organizations that are trying to gain funds for land conservation and recreation projects associated with rivers and greenways. Although tiny by federal standards--there are only about 100 staff positions overall--the program's accomplishments are significant. Each year, RTCA assists more than 250 communities in conserving more than 750 miles of river corridor, developing 1,500 miles of trails and protecting nearly 100,000 acres of open space. The small amount of funding that RTCA provides for technical assistance leverages much larger spending by state and local government for trail construction and long-term maintenance. A significant portion of trail construction funds for RTCA-aided projects comes from the Transportation Enhancements, funds dedicated in part to bike-pedestrian and rail/trail projects from the multi-year Transportation Equity Act for the 21st century.

The story of how the RTCA program makes such big gains in making communities healthier and more livable is a story of innovation, creativity and partnership.

Momentum on the Monongahela

Imagine this scene: A group of kayakers on the upper Monongahela River in Pennsylvania approaches the site of Government Lock #8, a massive stone structure near Ponit Marion, Pa., that once served the large boats ferrying coal from the Robena mine, at one time of the world's deepest coal mines. The downstream wall of the lock is huge, dwarfing the kayakers. Having read the Army Corps of Engineers pamphlet on how to "lock through" one kayaker skirts up to the wall of the lock, and yanks on the pull chain to signal the lock tender. Magically; as if someone said, "Open, Sesame," the giant doors swing back, and the group paddles into the lock chamber. They tie off on a floating pin, and the chamber water begins to swirl, rising from sonic unseen yet enormously powerful force. Within minutes, the water level rises, five feet, then ten feet, then even higher. When the rising waters flood the chamber to the correct elevation, a stoplight changes from red to green, and the massive gates on the upstream side of the lock creak open. The paddlers untie and continue on their uniquely aided journey upstream.

This extraordinary passage for canoes, kayaks and motor boats up and down the Monongahela River wouldn't be a reality without the efforts of a dedicated group of volunteers, government agencies and behind-the-scenes work of the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program.

"This is a good project," says Murray Kline, age 67, curator of the 100-year-old Young and Sons Foundry on the river shore, which is owned by the Green County Historical Society. "The water trail emphasizes the beauty of a scenic river, and we hope to link the water trail with the walking trail. You know, we have to change in our area. The economic situation dictates it. The decline of the mines, and loss of businesses related to them has had a big effect on our little river communities."

Dedicated in June, the 65-mile-long Upper Monongahela Water trail is the first trail of its kind between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Stretching from Fairmont, W.Va. to Rice's Landing, Pa. the water trail includes five locks and dams that can be used by recreational boaters.

"In my mind, I think the benefits will be mostly economic," says Kline. "I believe it will increase the tax base and improve the quality of life of everyone here." Joe Murphy, a retired college professor and member of the Point Marion Borough Council, echoes Kline's sentiments. "We are finally all realizing that the river is a wonderful resource for tourism," he says. "You know, this is a very economically depressed area. We barely have enough funds to meet expenses. Our infrastructure has been neglected for years. Finally, however, everyone is realizing that the river is a wonderful resource for tourism. We now have considerable political support for the economic benefits of heritage and recreational tourism."

Murphy is joined in his view of the potential benefits by Joe Cocalis, a retired environmental engineer, and Dennis Groce, a semi-retired civil engineer, who make up the Recreation Committee of the borough. Peggy Pings, RTCA planner for the project says, "These gentlemen are the ones making it happen. They are fantastic."

Murphy explains the project this way: "We hope to get a grant to build a dock in the park. We have a beautiful riverfront park of 14 acres at the confluence of the Cheat and the Monongahela. West Virginia will be bringing a hiker-biker trail up the old abandoned CSX line, which we hope to eventually connect to the park. The Upper Mon Water Trail was just dedicated, and it will serve both motorized and non-motorized boaters. The little towns along the river will really welcome this recreational use."

Most businesses bought into the project from the outset, Pings says, but a flew were skeptical, saying "We just don't have time for it." Attitudes are changing, however. A boating infrastructure grant has been applied for to build a dock to serve motorized boats longer than 26 feet. "One of the purposes of the water trail project is to encourage multi-day visits by recreational boaters," says Pings.

"The RTCA staff has been extremely helpful," Murphy says, "They bring enormous experience to the table. For example, look at their success on the Yock water trail [Youghioheny River]. Peggy may be called the coordinator; but I call her the prime mover. Because this has been an interstate project, it has been really difficult to bring all the partners together. She has been invaluable."

"Our story is not finished," Murphy adds with a touch of pride. "It is still really exciting. Finally, there is an awakening that this is a priority project that will contribute to the economic development of our area."

Broadening Access

In the Southeast, a blueway/greenway trail of a slightly different kind is taking shape along the French Broad River, from Knoxville, Tenn., to Asheville, N.C. "The simple purpose is to complete a blueway, or water trail, along 100+ miles of the French Broad River," says Charlotte Gillis, landscape architect in the RTCA's Atlanta field office. The Greater Smokey Mountain Regional Greenway Advisory Board requested assistance from the National Park Service to complete the blueway project. The Greenway Advisory Board is partnering with numerous local, regional, state, federal and nonprofit organization partners on the project. "The secondary purpose of the project," says Gillis, is "to create and promote a greenway on both sides of the river. The greenway would create riparian buffers, enable river-to-land connections, define recreation access points and enhance the blueway. RTCA is acting as the project manager, bringing local governments into a larger framework that analyzes data, identifies access points and ensures conservation of habitat." Charlotte indicated that economic development certainly may be a result of the project, but it isn't the primary purpose. "Conservation is the primary purpose of this project," Gillis says.

Donna Young, greenways director for Knoxville, says, "RTCA has been great for networking and building partnerships. Their presence validates the bona tides of new groups or new partners that we want to bring in. Everybody respects the National Park Service. Their help in organizing us led many other Tennessee communities to begin greenway projects. In Knoxville, we had 1.5 miles of greenways in 1994. Now we have 30 miles, and we are getting ready to build six to eight additional miles." One positive result of the new partnerships is described by Young as "the miracle of all time in our state. EPA and Tennessee Department of Transportation will partner on a mapping project, integrating GIS data from two different mapping systems. This is great, and it came out of our blueway project. I don't know if any other state does it quite like this." Her enthusiasm for the technical assistance that RTCA has been providing is unalloyed. "We wouldn't have done our blueway project if it weren't for RTCA," she says.

In Ohio, another RTCA success story took shape when Bob Fonte, the director of Stark County Parks, hooked up with Ernie Lehman of Ernie's Bike Shop, with assistance from Paul Labovitz and others of the Ohio RTCA staff According to Labovitz, Stark County has been ambitiously building and connecting trails, but as is common in many counties, good, accessible trailheads are difficult to locate. But thanks to creative thinking by the partners, an idea for a unique trailhead came from Lehman, an avid biker and traveler. He proposed a partnership with Stark County, in which he would buy an unused property near the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail, donate the majority of the land for a parking lot and trailhead, and then keep the remaining corner of the property for a restaurant, bike shop and canoe livery, and an ice-cream parlor.

At the recent dedication ceremony for the project, Lehman remarked that, as he traveled around the country riding trails, he always looked for a place like this. So he decided to make it happen. Craig Zondag, the bike shop manager, says, "This project will be valuable and important to Massillon, Ohio. There is a good portion of the population that really supports these kinds of recreational development projects." Says Labovitz,"This project exemplifies what the private sector and public agencies can do when they work together. The county got a great trailhead--paved, improved, with services, and the local businesses will get a significant boost from the economic activity that the trailhead generates."

Keying on Cooperation

In Florida, an ambitious trail project seeks to create an overland route the length of the Florida Keys utilizing the old causeways and historic bridges that formed the original Florida East Coast Oversea Railroad route, from Key Largo to Key West. Although a number of the original bridge spans are gone, much of the trail route is intact, and a large group of public and non-profit partners is actively connecting the trail segments.

The Florida Office of Greenways and Trails, Florida State Parks and a number of municipal and county governments were joined by the Rails to Trails Conservancy and assisted by the RTCA program in developing a plan in the early 1990s. In the 2000, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection agreed to construct and manage the trail at the request of Monroe County and in coordination with the Florida Department of Transportation.

According to Steve Bowes, project planner for RTCA in Florida, the trail planners faced formidable obstacles at the outset--a long trail corridor, a significantly deteriorated infrastructure, bridges in disrepair or missing altogether, and a multitude of jurisdictions, each managing its own small segment of the trail. RTCA played a pivotal role early in the project by bringing all the partners together, and assisted the key players from Monroe County and the Rails to Trails Conservancy. "RTCA played the role of a good faith broker," says Bowes, "when communications between the county and the state were not going as well as everybody hoped they would."

Jose Papa, the bicycle and pedestrian planner for Monroe County, describes the vision for the completed trail: "The Overseas Heritage Trail will be a 106-mile-long continuous trail from Key Largo to Key West. There will new connections made to existing trail segments to complete the project. The trail will have kiosks, interpretive sites, overlooks, and there will be interpretation of Florida history and culture, including archeology. The trail will also have an important alternative transportation component for local residents as well as hiker-biker users, and there will be access to shops, outfitters and local businesses." Papa notes the importance of RTCA's role. "The value of RTCA's involvement in this project is that we can borrow from the National Park Service's experience and expertise," he says. "The Overseas Heritage Trail started as a grassroots effort to preserve the bridges, but thinking evolved. The National Park Service experience was invaluable in bringing knowledge gained from other similar projects to the table here."

In addition to the Overseas Heritage Trail, a parallel effort is taking place to develop the Florida Overseas Paddling Trail. "We are identifying and developing public access sites, put-in and take-out locations, and mapping small paddling hops along the spine of the Overseas Heritage Trail," says Bowes of RTCA. "RTCA staff push the envelope. They try to think out of the box and get potential partners to think that way. They try to build potential capacity in the community, and get all the partners thinking in the same frame of reference.

"RTCA specializes in planning," Bowes continues. "We know what the first few steps that need to be taken are, and we know how to build capacity." Referring to early efforts of the Paradise Paddlers, a nonprofit kayak and canoe club in the Keys that was the first group to promote the idea of the trail, Bowes says, "Paradise Paddlers had some unproductive starts early on when they got mired down in legal matters. We were able to assist them and others to get things moving, and once it did, it took off. RTCA gets in at the ground level, offers concepts and brings potential partners together. Often we augment local and state governments who don't have resources or funding for specialized services. We can bring in in-kind services, expertise, consultants and networking. We don't have any grant money, but we do have expertise, and we can make our planners available to local and state governments. The states and local governments can use them a few times a month for a year or so, and it is invaluable to them. Grant organizations don't operate this way, and aren't set up to offer technical services when the local governments or nonprofits really need them."

Papa of Monroe County says, "There is a lot of talent and knowledge here in the Keys. The challenge is to bring it all together to get the best benefit of it. RTCA has been able to do that."

Seamless in Seattle

On the other side of the country, another unique RTCA-aided project has taken shape with the most wonderful results. The Lakes to Locks Water Trail in Seattle, Wash. is a network of more than 100 launch and landing sites in and around Seattle. "In the mid 1990s, we came up with the idea to get a 'Paddle Through Seattle,'" says Reed Waite, executive director of the Washington "Water Trails Association, the organization that spearheaded the nearby Cascadia Marine Trail, a national recreation trail. "However, it was literally illegal to put in or take out a canoe or kayak at any public park except at a designated, authorized boat ramp. This is what faced us when we started this project. We contacted the National Park Service, and said we have an idea for a project. RTCA came in to help us, and offered a number of ideas--why don't you consider this, why don't you expand your thinking on that?

When our little nonprofit organization tried to sell the idea, we didn't get far," says Waite. "When the federal government comes to talk to local governments, however, they sit up and listen, and it was invaluable to our project. RTCA got the communities to sign local letters of support, and they became the basis for a local coalition of many different interest groups. If we were doing it alone, we would still be feuding with the city. RTCA was able to bring a bigger focus and a broader perspective to the project." In fact, this project was so successful that it won the North American Water Trails Blue Ribbon Trail Award in 2001, and the prestigious National Park Partnership Award in Recreation of the National Park Service in 2002.

"The benefits of the trail have been these," Waite says. "It has given visibility to the shoreline and made residents' more aware of the sound's shoreline as an asset. All of us are becoming more aware of the problems as they occur, and we are certainly becoming more aware of the values of this wonderful water resource of our city. We have not tried to tie the project to economic development, but there are undeniable benefits starting to happen."

"This project has been a great success," says Sue Abbot, project planner for RTCA in Seattle. "The unique aspects of this water trail are that it is located in completely in an urban area, and virtually all the sites were already existing. RTCA's role was to pull the partners together, get buy-in to the project idea and then act as a catalyst to get all partners to realize the potential of the trail. Our success was our ability to pool resources, and bring partners together."

Funding Success

The Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program has achieved such success that President Bush's budget for Fiscal Year 2004, which starts next month, proposes an increase in funding of about $1.5 million, from $8.2 million to $9.6 million. The increased funding would allow RTCA to increase the number of communities served and to complete about 60 more projects per year. Encouraged by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and 22 other senators, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a roughly equivalent budget increase for the RTCA program for FY 2004, The House Appropriations Committee didn't include an increase for the RTCA program in its bill. At press time, however. there was hope that the House would also agree that this valuable program merits more resources.

Creating Cooperation

One of the ways that the River, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program assists nonprorfit organizations that are working on long-term greenway, blueway and rail-trail projects is through cooperative agreements. The cooperative agreements enable long-term partnership programs to be sustained by providing a limited amount of matching funding for assigned staff or technical assistance.

One such project is the Southern Appalachians Initiative, a Partnership project of the American Hiking Society and the National Park Service through RTCA. Based in Chattanooga, Tenn., the initiative aims to build, promote and maintain a 5,000-mile interconnected network of hiking trails in the Southeast. The project was unveiled in June. At the core Of the initiative is the Southeast Regional Foot Trails Coalition, which is composed of more than 20 hiking clubs from the Southeast. A joint management plan guides the five-year cooperative agreement The trails are beginning to link Communities with cooperation, and the project is starting to deliver benefits in meeting the region's needs for land preservation and recreation opportunities.

Richard Dolesh is a senior policy associate in NRPA's public policy office. He can be reached at [e-mail]. For more information on the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, see www.nps.gov/rtca.